Monday, May 25, 2009

Oh man, here I am with another late update! keepin' it professional, here at xkcdsucks.

I'll be nice today and say that this comic has some good parts to it. I can't quite describe it, but it is related to the desperate-looking-for-patterns that is so endemic of sciencey TV dramas, which are certainly worth parodying.

The problem I think is that Mathnet (not something I was familiar with beforehand, I will admit) is as far as I can see already a parody. So the xkcd is just taking something funny and....making more jokes off it. very much like the critique of that Princess Bride comic a few months back: you are going to have to do more than just jump on the back of another person's humor vehicle.

Is there any reason they need that caption at all? It's funnier without it - a little more mysterious (when is the right time for George's useful pattern finding skillz?) and it just sort of flops on the end there. Better to end where the joke is. Perhaps if the caption had been on top, so we still end with the "This is not possibly helpful" concept it would work better at the very end.

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Have I already said that Abstruse Goose is one of the worst websites on the planet? It is. That is all I am going to say for a long time about that horrible comic.

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Guys do you remember how Randy is having an actual printed book of his comics made up to be sold for money? I am looking for sources to try to get me a review copy. I promise to treat it fairly (and since it will likely have a lot of old comics, I will likely have a lot of nice things to say) and link to any sort of website that may be selling it. If you have any helpful connections to make this happen, send me a missive. Let's make this happen, guys.

The great thing about Abtruse Goose is that the author (somewhat indirectly) admits to being a shitty version of Randall Munroe.

This comic's faltering point was probably the reference in and of itself. I feel like if I watched Mathnet, it might have been hilarious, more so if Randy broke tradition and actually introduced a character in a way that followed the pre-written personality for them.

However, if I may make a suggestion for the next post, I would say that you may not reach the required level of rage for your blog post until you read through the forum thread about how everybody was clearly far too much of a genuis for high school and things would have been perfect if they ran it.

But as I was saying in the last comic's comments, this xkcd didn't make me laugh simply because it fits firmly into one of Randall's ecks-kay-cli-chés which involves "{someone clever in their field} is introduced to {situation where their expertise shouldn't apply}" and then he nudges said person's intelligence down so they don't rely on rational thought/logic. Instead they make retarded statements that Randall expects us to smile at and go "oh that wacky Munroe."

Well I, personally, am not smiling, Munroe. This shit wasn't realistic even at the height of social ineptitude nerds achieved before it become 'cool to be uncool.' There's surrealism and then there's 'wacky just to be wacky.'

Dear xkcd: please stop making jokes that just say, "ha ha guys look at this expert being totally lost outside of his field ISN'T THAT HILARIOUS." You're insulting our intelligence as well as your own.

Fascinating! Just as this one is, as Rehoboam said, "ha ha guys look at this expert being totally lost outside of his field ISN'T THAT HILARIOUS", the new one (Pep Rally) is the equally trite "ha ha guys look aspects of our culture don't make sense"

In this case , I don't really understand quite why it's even worth poking fun at. It's a point so obvious as to border on the banal -- WOW SPORTS RIVALRIES DON'T MAKE SENSE BECAUSE WE'RE ALL THE SAME PEOPLE, HOLY CRAP. Is this worth pointing out? Will we have comics such as "WHY DO WE ATTACH SO MUCH VALUE TO AUTOGRAPHS" and "PEOPLE TEXT OTHER PEOPLE INSTEAD OF CALLING THEM WOW HOW CRAZY" in the near future?

I feel a bit begrudged at some of the comments in this comment section. Admittedly, I didn't like the comic but what you are complaining about isn't a reason for something to be not funny, but to be monotonous. Look at Tim Minchin, who I think is pretty funny, and yet you can classify most of his material as "He sings a song about something serious but then deals with it in an unnecessarily naive and/or scientific way to extract humour from an outsiders' view of things as common as love or war." You can do that with every comedian as they most of them have a set of material they work from.

Randall is going downhill, yes, but not because most of his comics fit into a pre-set mould.

I agree that this comic didn't really have to reference that TV-show (which I had never heard of) on the other hand this is part of what has given XKCD it's fanbase, just look at this comment from "Smartdude992" on the forum thread:

"I hate it when I don't get the joke on my own and I have to google it...this is just a reason for me to watch more tv..."

God there is just so many things wrong with that comment. These references are simply for people to say "Oh I know this!" and feel smart (because Randall is smart and they know the same things!).

I also agree that the "expert outside his own field" thing is getting kind of boring, because the comedy comes from the absurdity of the situation, but it is just not surprising anymore.

"ha ha guys look aspects of our culture don't make sense"

That is too broad a topic to really critize someone for using, honestly. There is plenty of potential for humor in that topic.

Trust me, getting the reference doesn't make this one funny. If you went with the premise of "Mathnet was a real division of the LAPD," then they would have been cops first, math experts second, so they'd still know basic police procedure. If you're going with the premise of "they hired mathematicians to be police," then they'd have just been fired when Mathnet closed. So the joke makes no sense.

"Admittedly, I didn't like the comic but what you are complaining about isn't a reason for something to be not funny, but to be monotonous."

I'm sorry I can't see the absolute hilarity in pure monotony. Maybe I should study paint drying for a few hours until I can find it funny?

Running a joke into the ground is not "comedy," and if anything it negates the humour on subsequent read-throughs. Running jokes are good; repeated jokes are bad. The former uses the concept of 'moderation'; the latter is closer to desperation.

Top of the blog: "It's feeling more and more like Randall Munroe is a man who is out of ideas, so he is just writing comics that include as many references to computer science [or in this case TV shows - don't forget that carcinogenic Nathan Fillion story arc] as possible ... or comics with hardly any effort put into them, or some other not actually funny idea."

I was horrified to see that 90% of the posts in this comic's thread were "OMG, Mathnet! That show ruled so much", as if the mere MENTION of the show was enough to make the comic great. It's like people feel they have to lower their intellectual level to the point of sucking Randall's dick WHENEVER he mentions something that makes them feel "smart". Yuck! And, at least to me, when you cut out the "reference" part of the comic, the humour is okay but a bit dull.Worst thing about that thread, though, is the guy that makes "corrections" to other people's posts (including mine), and then another guy linking to ENCYCLOPEDIA DRAMATICA -- probably the worst comedy website in the world -- to justify it as a "cool" même. Yeah, the guy getting pissed off is me. They'd probably just ignore me if I tried being diplomatic, so I decided to simply be rude. That usually works, for better or worse. Fuck those guys.

Well face it, Fernie Canto, the people who hang out on the xkcd forums all the time won't be your crème de la crème of computing and technology. They're going to be the failures who never achieved anything more than a shitty office job programming some crappy system in Java. They have nothing better going on in their lives than circlejerking about getting a reference Randall throws out to them. Just be glad that you aren't jerking in that circle.

I need to get a new name. Seeing another John say "Really liked the alt-text, as well. This is one of the better xkcds in a looong time." is slightly jarring. I'd never say that.

Well, I would if it was true, but there hasn't been a decent xkcd in months.

Pep Rally is terrible. It's not bad because of Randall's usual problems though. But really it's just a "What's the deal with Pep Rallies" type joke. Though observational humor requires jokes, Randall is just leaving us with the observations as if that's a stand in for humor.

Re: "circlejerking", hoo, I plan to never get into that kind of thing, ever. I guess, indeed, it's useless to try to hammer that point home over in the forums, since people are NOT going to give up that little pleasure very easily. The aggravating factor is, of course, the fact that xkcd is an "intellectual" comic, so everything they do there is justified by default -- even using the goddamn Encyclopedia Dramatica as comedic source.Regarding the comic, again, I got confused in one pretty arbitrary thing: all those lines aren't said by the same person, are they? On panel three, the two sentences seem "discontinued". This gives a different interpretation, from "random specialist in a silly situation", into "anti-pep-rally sentiment growing among people". If it's to be taken like that, the comic is far more bitter than comedic; and considering the subject matter, I can't really blame Randall. Actually, I CAN, but I'm not willing.

I'm with Cuddlefish Prime on this: agree with the sentiment, but it's not at all funny.

But wow, K and Fred, those comment sections are infuriating. I'm imagining the commenters as Napolean Dynamite. Living simultaneously in the real world and in an alternate reality where nunchuck skills are THE way to attract women, it's perfectly reasonable to put tater tots in their pockets for later, and pep rallies are expressions reinforcing irrational hatreds.

Like I said, the xkcd forums is full of dull-minded sycophants desperately trying to get Randall to offer his cock to -them- in the hopes that this wil some day lead to their world-wide recognition as something more than worthless.

Anything Munroe says goes, and you can be damn sure that his forumites will masturbate heavily to the ability to 'associate' with him about high school. "Oh yes my high school was shitty too!" they cry out, proud because they were oh-so-clever but nobody respected them, boo hoo hoo. The reason that no-one respected them is because they're socially inept, gibbering morons who spend most of their waking lives circlejerking on a forum dedicated to a guy with too much time on his hands. Go figure.

Wikipedia basically covered all there is to it. You crowd into the gymnasium bleachers, the relevant sporting team enters to thunderous applause, and then there's cheerleading and music and sometimes little games or other activities. The idea is to get everyone psyched for the upcoming match, thus "rallying" support and filling the student body with copious amounts of "pep". At my school, attendance was mandatory; I don't know how common that is.

Accusations of jingoistic brainwashing and comparisons to 1984's Two Minutes Hate are, in my opinion, vastly overblown. It's really nothing more than a bit of high-energy, crowd-pleasing silliness.

For me, the pep rally itself wasn't so bad but our gymnasium was nowhere near large enough to accomodate the entire school population. It was designed to be big enough for the school district, but the school had specialty programs that attracted at least 1/2 as many extra people from other districts, so you got to the point where there were people sitting on the floor and standing in the aisles and it was hard to really see what was going on sometimes. The cheerleaders and the band and the administration were talented and they did a good job but if you got stuck behind a pillar or something then it was hard to enjoy it.

That's cute! "Most serious thinkers." It's like you have read the political ruminations of most serious thinkers!

Which, you know, you haven't. (Sorry, your sophomore class doesn't count as serious thinkers.) But I will give you the benefit of the doubt. Find me at least three essays from well-regarded and influential "serious thinkers" which conclude that patriotism is a bad thing. Quotes from quote pages don't count--I want an essay or excerpt from a longer treatise.

Then explain, in your own words, why these three essays demonstrate the viewpoint of the majority of serious thinkers. Please explain why you are ignoring the views of serious thinkers throughout history who clearly and solidly disagree with you. Also be prepared to defend why the writers you have chosen qualify as serious thinkers.

Well, you're the one making claims about "most serious thinkers." I'm just asking you to back up that claim--and I'm even being lenient. Most people would require you to pull up a survey of people who qualify as serious thinkers. I'm just asking for an essay defending your position.

If you're not prepared to back up your thesis with research, then stop making idiot assertions.

Oh, my poor Class of 2011 Cuddlefish. I gave you an opportunity to back your idiotic opinion up with some actual research into the matter. See, this is how grown-ups exchange ideas. They actually back up their claims that a majority of "serious thinkers" share an opinion with them, rather than just asserting it and whinging that it is pompous of their opponent to ask for verification (which I would gladly read and comment on).

You see, I operate on the assumption that those who invoke "serious thinkers" are prepared to do some serious thought of their own, and have done enough research that they should be able to, fairly trivially, produce a few essays with a minimum of searching. If you are prepared to say that a majority of serious thinkers hold to a standpoint, surely you have at least one essay you can produce offhand that suggests that this might be the case?

I haven't been asked to defend my own ideas or asked any relevant questions. I'm also not making any assertions about what the majority of "serious thinkers" believe or making any claim to fact, other than the fact that you are an idiot sixteen year old who doesn't understand the philosophy of nationalism, at all, which is self-evident.

Jay, here are some cuddles for you because I feel like you need them. [cuddle] [cuddle] [cuddle] Okay that is three, let me know if you need more.

Cuddlefish Prime: yeah it was mandatory for me too. Usually students used them as a way to play hooky or just meet up with friends during the rally and ignore whatever was going on down on the gym floor. Like one of the cuddlefishes here, my gym was also too small for my school and usually we spilled onto the floor, or they split us up and had two separate rallies, and then the performers would be all tired either because they were anticipating having to do two rallies or because they were tired from already having done one rally.

On an entirely unrelated note, the word "mandatory" always makes me think of my own name, and then I feel narcissistic.

Anyway. Comic would have been better without the reference. I feel like all xkcds should be read like that: first read it as is, then think "good god this is awful, but maybe..." and then remove the reference in your mind. Perhaps you will laugh!

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

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